1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an auto-playing apparatus which can synchronously perform reproduction of audio data and an auto-play based on auto-playing data using a recording medium for recording the audio data and a memory means for storing the auto-playing data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an auto-playing apparatus in an electronic musical instrument, pitch and duration data corresponding to notes of a music piece are stored in a semiconductor memory according to the progress of the music piece. The pitch and duration data are read out from the semiconductor memory and are supplied to a sound source circuit, so that the music piece can be automatically played back as it is stored. Such auto-playing apparatuses have always been proposed, and many commercially available electronic musical instruments have such functions. A technique about an auto-playing apparatus of this type is disclosed in detail in, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,624,171 by Yuzawa et al.
When a playing technique of an electronic musical instrument is to be learned, the auto-playing apparatus can exhibit great practical effects. That is, a player (or operator) can store key operation signals played by himself or herself as auto-playing data, and can cause the auto-playing apparatus to perform an auto-play based on the stored auto-playing data, so that he or she can objectively judge his or her performance.
In general, a music piece is as a combination of parts of a plurality of kinds of instruments played by the plurality of kinds of instruments. When a specific one of the plurality of instrument parts is to be played, if a music piece including the overall parts are played back as a background music, a learning effect can be improved. That is, if a player plays his part while listening to the music piece played back as the background music, he can easily recognize a timing of a melody part to be played by him.
A music piece to be played back as a background music can be easily obtained by playing back an analog disk or a compact disk (CD) by a disk or CD player. It is more effective to use an analog disk or a CD recorded in a "minus-one" format. The "minus-one" analog disk or CD is manufactured especially for a person who learns, e.g., a piano, and records a piano concerto excluding a piano part. Thus, a player plays his or her instrument while playing back a music piece recorded in the "minus-one" format.
In this case, a learning effect can be improved if his or her playing data is stored using the auto-playing apparatus and the stored data is played back. In the auto-playing mode, however, the "minus-one" recording medium, the analog disk or CD must be played back in advance, and the auto-playing apparatus must be started at proper time corresponding to the beginning of his or her part.
If the player fails to start manually the auto-playing apparatus at a predetermined timing, the played back tones cannot be synchronous with the auto-play.